The jury said Aug. 24 at the end of a trial that Samsung should pay $1.05 billion. Apple asked Koh to increase the damages by $536 million, while Samsung says they should be reduced by more than $600 million. Koh, who held a hearing on the matter Dec. 6, has yet to issue a ruling.
“There’s not going to be any knockout punches between these two competitors,” Carl Howe, a Yankee Group analyst, said in a phone interview. “Injunctions can be knockouts. This is going to be a war of money.”
Samsung and Apple, the world’s two biggest smartphone makers, have each scored victories in their patent disputes fought over four continents since Apple accused Asia’s biggest electronics maker of “slavishly copying” its devices. The companies are competing for dominance of a global mobile-device market estimated by Yankee Group at $346 billion this year.
Apple Products
Hours after Koh’s ruling on the sales ban, Samsung, which faces an antitrust probe by European regulators, said it will halt efforts to block sales of Apple products in Europe. The developments in the U.S. and Europe may move the companies closer to settling their global litigation.
“There will be some settlement of some sort and all this stuff is just going to dictate who’s going to provide a bit more money than the other,” said David Long, a patent lawyer with Dow Lohnes PLLC in Washington who’s not involved in the case. “All this court stuff is just posturing.”
After the verdict in San Jose, Apple argued Samsung bet that the benefits of using intellectual property from the iPhone and iPad would outweigh the money damages the jury awarded. Apple urged Koh to approve the sales ban and award additional damages because Samsung took market share from Apple by “deliberately copying the iPhone design,” according to a court filing.
Jury’s Calculations
Kathleen Sullivan, a lawyer for Samsung, contended at the Dec. 6 hearing that the damages should be reduced by more than $600 million. Sullivan said that while the jury’s calculations were precise, the nine-member panel was hampered by a verdict form that, against Samsung’s wishes, wasn’t “particularized” enough to permit jurors to properly arrive at damages on a product-by-product basis.
“You should reverse engineer” to make sure the damages are “causally connected to the evidence,” Sullivan told the judge.
Koh said at the hearing that while the jury was precise and consistent in calculating infringement damages for 28 different Samsung products, the method used by the panel may have been mistaken.
“If there is enough evidence in the record to justify that damage award then that verdict should be upheld,’ Harold McElhinny, a lawyer for Apple, argued to the judge.
Galaxy Smartphones
The patent disputes began when Samsung released its Galaxy smartphones in 2010. Apple’s Jobs, who died Oct. 5, 2011, initiated contact with Samsung over his concerns that the Galaxy phones copied the iPhone, according to testimony from the trial in August.
Jobs later vowed to wage "thermonuclear war" to prove that phones running on Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system copy the iPhone. Samsung devices use Android.
Apple’s 2011 suit claimed Samsung products infringe four design patents and three utility, or software, patents. While finding infringement of six patents, the jury concluded that Samsung didn’t infringe one patent covering the design of Apple’s iPad tablet computer.
from: http://www.filesaz.com/apple-and-samsung-judge-mulls-damages/
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